Electrical contact terminals are used for the connection of electrical cables, which typically consist of an insulation sheath surrounding a single conductor or a plurality of wires, to electrical components. In particular in the automotive industry, usually contact terminals are connected to electrical cables via crimping.
To this end, the contact terminals comprise, on one end, opposite crimping wings which, upon crimping, are bent around a corresponding portion of an electrical cable which, for this purpose, is inserted between those crimping wings.
To perform the crimping action, the corresponding crimping tools are provided with respective crimping dies, which usually consist of a crimping punch and a crimping anvil. Upon crimping, typically the contact terminal with the cable inserted in a corresponding crimping portion is placed between respective crimping dies, particularly between the crimping anvil and the crimping punch. These crimping dies are provided with surfaces which are shaped such that upon moving the crimping dies together, the crimping wings are bent into the desired shape around the inserted cable.
Usually, separate pairs of crimping wings are provided, particularly for a contact crimping portion to be crimped around a stripped off end portion of the cable, and for an insulation crimping portion to be crimped around the adjacent cable insulation. In particular, in mass production facilities, crimping processes are performed by corresponding automated crimping tools while, if only fewer crimping operations are needed, as for example upon domestic use or also e.g. in smaller car repair shops, typically crimping actions are performed using hand crimp tools which are to be manually operated.
A typical crimping process for connecting a contact terminal to a corresponding electrical cable is disclosed in EP 1 503 454 A1. The contact terminals are provided with a contact crimping portion and an insulation crimping portion to be crimped respectively to a stripped off end section of a cable and an insulation section of the cable. The crimping wings for the contact crimping portion and the insulation crimping portion are provided with different suitable lengths in correspondence to the different cross-sections of the contact crimping portion and the insulation crimping portion.
An example of a crimping apparatus, as it is used in mass production facilities, is described in US 2005/0050940 A1. The apparatus described therein can adapt the distance between the corresponding crimping dies in accordance with crimping portions of different thicknesses by means of a pre-adjustment of the distance between the corresponding crimping dies. To this end, the apparatus is provided with a mechanism which is based on the rotation of a member with a polygonal cross-section and which can be rotated into different positions corresponding to the number of sides of the polygon. This member is arranged such that when it is rotated into a certain position, one of the crimping dies is moved with respect to the other by a certain amount depending on the position. Thus, this mechanism allows pre-adjusting the distance between the crimping dies by certain predefined amounts. However, by this mechanism, it is not possible to continuously fine tune this distance.
A further crimping tool is described in DE 10 2008 002 512 A1. Therein, a hand crimp tool is described which can be manually operated by a person. This tool comprises two handles, wherein one of the handles is stiffly connected to a frame, while the other handle is operatively connected to a die carrier which removably supports a first crimping die. A further crimping die can be removably arranged within the frame, and the distance between those dies can be pre-adjusted based on a mechanism similar to the one described above. Upon crimping, an operator presses handles together, whereby the die carrier is moved together with the first crimping die towards the other crimping die essentially by means of a lever action. Even though the construction is designed to reduce rotational movements of the crimping dies, due to the lever-pivot mechanism, at least small rotational movements cannot be fully avoided. Therefore, this construction requires the crimping dies to be precisely mounted without any angular deviations. In order to maintain this precise mounting, a continuous maintenance of this hand crimp tool is mandatory.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to improve the state of the art by providing a hand crimp tool which requires less maintenance. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a hand crimp tool with a mechanism which allows an easy fine tuning of the distance between the crimping dies.
These and other objects, which become apparent upon reading the following description, are solved by a hand crimp tool according to the present invention.